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Take your pick: Music of the Heart is either the touching portrayal of a real-life teacher and her uphill battle to teach urban children to play the violin; or it's Mrs. Holland's Opus, a weepy, by-the-numbers chick-flick that pushes all the right buttons. I think it's somewhere in between, but the wonderful performance by Meryl Streep is enough to sway me a bit more toward the former.
Music's opening credits display photographs from the seemingly perfect life of Roberta Guaspari (Meryl Streep, Dancing at Lughnasa). We learn that she is happily married to a naval officer and has two marvelous sons. When the credits end and the picture starts, Roberta is teary, frazzled mess because her husband just left her. She and her children, Nick (Michael Angarano) and Lexi (Henry Dinhofer), are forced to move from their suburban home.
Since she doesn't really have much professional experience other than playing the violin, Roberta has a tough time finding a job until she meets an old high school classmate named Brian Sinclair (Aidan Quinn, In Dreams). Brian is amazed that Roberta isn't a concert violinist (her college professor told her that she started playing too late) and refers her to Janet Williams, an East Harlem school principal (Angela Bassett, How Stella Got Her Groove Back) in need of a music teacher.
At first, Janet has no interest in hiring Roberta on account of her lack of teaching experience, but changes her mind the next day when Roberta wheels in her two fiddling kids to demonstrate the discipline that she has taught them. When Janet balks at the idea of the school being able to afford violins for students, Roberta proudly chirps that she purchased fifty to start a private program years ago. Roberta is hired on a temporary basis.
Once her classes start, Roberta finds herself in a younger version of Sister Act – a class full of disorderly little kids that sword fight with their bows and use the violin cases to simulate machine guns. Other teachers are skeptical, resentful and distant, and she even finds resistance in the parents of her students. One angrily states that her kid doesn't need to learn the music of `dead white men,' while another calls the principal when Roberta's attempts at teaching discipline are mistaken for downright cruelty.
Roberta and her students are able to pull off the big make-it-or-break-it recital, earning the respect of parents and teachers alike. Flash to ten years later, where Roberta's program now encompasses three area elementary schools and students must win a lottery to enroll in her classes. But ten days before their big annual concert, she learns that the funding for her program will be slashed from the next budget.
Music is a big career step for horrormeister Wes Craven (Scream), who directs Pamela Gray's (A Walk on the Moon) script of the true story that was originally the basis of a documentary. I half expected to see Freddie Krueger jump out from behind a desk at the school. The film also has horrible continuity, with cupboards open in one shot and magically closed in the next, and the presence of 3D Doritos in a film that is supposed to be set in the 1980s. Who do they think they're kidding?
While Music is considerably slowed down by both Roberta's romantic life and her home remodeling, and the film's need to portray the peril of inner-city life, Streep and the depth of her character shine like a brightly polished fiddle. As Roberta, she gets to constantly hammer home the importance of practicing while warning her students that they're `going to make your parents sick if you play like that.' I smell another Oscar nomination.
2:04 – PG for some mild adult situations and the talk of violins…I mean violence
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